LIVE MUSIC IN THE SOUTH SOUND TONIGHT >>>
HARDCORE: It could accurately be called the end of an era. Tonight, Tacoma's Viaduct all ages venue - which has been a regionally known epicenter for hardcore music and hardcore youth - will hold its final show ever, bringing Shook Ones, Make Do and Mend, Hostage Calm, Cowardice, Oblivion and a bunch of other scream-happy ragers to the stage. "There were five owners of the Viaduct," club employee Jeremy Bushnell told the Volcano earlier this month. "On a monthly basis, they were paying anywhere between 50 and around 300 bucks out-of-pocket to keep the place open. It got to the point where they couldn't do it anymore. ... The beginning of this year, around January or February, is when they were really getting to the point when they were like, ‘We might have to think about doing something else.'" Unfortunately, that time is upon us. Though we do hear there's already a new tenant lined up for the space, and the plan is for another all ages venue that will focus on reggae and hip-hop. That'd be nice, but any way you slice it - losing the Viaduct sucks. With Shook Ones, Make Do And Mend, Hostage Calm, Cowardice, Oblivion, Wreck, Cool Runnings, Power, Sixes, Open Fire!, Swinglow, Saturday, July 31, 7 p.m., $5, The Viaduct, 5412 South Tacoma Way, Tacoma, 253.226.1820 - Matt Driscoll
INSTRUMENTAL ROCK: They Rise, We Die is Tristan McNabb's newest project, a musical rebound from the 2009 break-up of much-loved Tacoma-area instrumental act Waves and Radiation. Winners of the 2006 Weekly Volcano award for "Best Experimental Band," Waves and Radiation made epic, shoegaze-y post-rock that coalesced a number of pedal-happy influences (e.g. the Kadane Brothers' slowcore masterworks) into one heavenly mixture. McNabb is right to describe his new outfit as "heavier" - They Rise, We Die is a monstrous band, evoking the sun-blotting scale of an alien mothership hovering over Washington state. Read the full story here. With Levator and Brotherhood of the Black Squirrel, Saturday, July 31, 9 p.m., Bob's Java Jive, 2102 S. Tacoma Way, Tacoma, 253.475.9843 - Jason Baxter
HIP-HOP: Scraps on the Badlands - it's an evocative name, bringing to mind dusty, forlorn, almost uninhabitable stretches of nothingness, and also (in many ways) Tacoma. This makes sense, considering Revengers, a band spawned by the Biznautics and T-Town itself, and who dropped Scraps on the Badlands late last year, basically ARE Tacoma ... or damn close to it. An album crafted amidst both triumphs and horrible tragedies (producer Tom Pfaeffle died the summer prior to its official release, and Danny "D-Child" Cline - formerly of the Biznautics and fellow T-Town hip-hop act Nasty Left - lost his battle with cancer not long before its release), Scraps on the Badlands is a lyrical, profoundly artistic and haunting ode to the city that spawned it. "That's a lot of what our record is about, is standing your ground in the face of hardship and not getting beaten up by the world, so we kind of had to live by that," Revengers' Dale Coleman said at the time of the record's release. The fight continues. Saturday, July 31, 9:30 p.m., no cover, Doyle's Public House, 208 Saint Helens Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.7468 - MD